The present invention generally relates to drug handling equipment and more particularly, to a drug dispensing apparatus which is arranged to continuously form separate packets or pouches (referred to as packets hereinafter) by a packaging sheet or paper for accommodating individual drug doses therein, with patients' names, times for taking the drug doses, etc. being printed on the packets for dispensing.
It is to be noted here that the term "drug" as employed throughout this specification should be understood as including medicine in the form of pills, tablets, capsules or the like.
For a drug dispensing apparatus, there has conventionally been proposed a technique disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,917,045, which is so arranged that, upon input of information related to drugs to be taken by patients according to prescriptions, the drug dosages are discharged according to this input information so as to be introduced into receptacles which are set for respective patients. However, according to this prior art, it is necessary to preliminarily determine a receptacle to receive the drugs for each patient, and to set the receptacle for the patient who needs the drug doses on the apparatus during the discharging of the drugs, thus the operation being made undesirably troublesome. Furthermore, in the above prior art technique, since the drugs are supplied upon arrival at the time for the patients to take the drugs, use of the apparatus is concentrated upon the respective drug taken time.
Therefore, according to this invention, in a drug dispensing apparatus arranged to supply discharged drugs into separate packets formed by a packaging sheet, it is intended to print discriminating data such as names and the like for respective patients, and time of taking drugs on the packets. By effecting such printing on the packets, not only the troublesome procedures for preparing receptacles for the respective patients or for setting receptacles on the apparatus are eliminated, but erroneous recognition of the drug taking time may be advantageously prevented, and thus, it becomes possible to continuously supply the drug doses at respective drug taking time at one time.
When the packets are printed with various times identifying individual data for each patient, such as drug taking time, etc. one requirement is to provide a function of providing printed portions on the packets for each printed item according to shape and kind of drugs to be packed, and also, according to the size of the packets. Furthermore, the packets after packing the drugs therein must be inspected to see if correct drug doses as input have been accommodated therein, for which purpose, each of the packets should be compared with the prescription, thus, also requiring a time consuming procedure.